In-Group Bias and Inter-Group Dialogue in Canadian Multiculturalism

ABSTRACT

African-Canadians continue to bear the brunt of marginality and stereotyping in Canada even when various mitigating studies and programs have been initiated by the government at federal, state, and municipal levels. These stereotypes continue to affect them in informal settings and state institutions when seeking employment, housing or when in the streets, malls, schools, etc. While social justice advocates, social workers, and policy-makers focus on “Black-White” dynamics because other “racialized minorities” are also marginalized (though not equally) in Canada, it is important to note that “non-White” Canadians also contribute to the spread of historical stereotypes of African-Canadians within Canadian multiculturalism as noted in the emphasis of the city of Toronto’s mitigating strategies for “anti-Black racism.” Using social group position theory (SGPT) and asset-based model (ABCD), this paper argues that interrogating social group biases beyond “Black-White” binarism to encourage inter-group dialogs is important in making sure that different multicultural communities understand one another through favorable, activities-mediated, inter-group relations as opposed to having multicultural relations mediated by third parties, or not mediated at all. We also argue that African-Canadians should focus on internal strengths and only use external help to augment community initiatives to change the extant negative image.

KEYWORDS:

• Inter-group dialogue
• in-group bias
• social policy
• multiculturalism
• Anti-black racism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Instead of “white,” we use continental and diaspora European (CADE).

² SP is used here as a collective term for professionals working in public institutions: school principals, teachers, police, doctors, psychologists, social workers, social service leaders, etc.

³ Margaret Cannon (1995) has called this “an invisible empire.”

⁴ See the Ontario Human Rights Commission (2019, 2020) for important examples regarding how complicated multicultural relations in Canada are in terms of the marginalization of African-Canadians.

⁵ See Garang (2022) for an explanation of behavior-in-time and behavior-in-discourse, that is, knowing others through experience and knowing them through discourse (or third-party narratives).

⁶ Socio-emotional investment here means the ability to be emotionally affected by a given social reality, action or a situation and to be able to respond accordingly so as to offer possible mitigation solutions. Socio-emotional investment is usually a function of a group socialization from childhood.

⁷ It is common in scholarly and activists’ works today to see “white” vs. BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and People of Color]. See Sandra E. S. Garcia’s (2020) article on The New York Times in which she addresses the promises and problematics of BIPOC.

⁸ The following section presents Canadian examples.

⁹ The underground railroad and the flight of former American slaves to Canada after the Fugitive Slave law of 1850 (Drew, 1856; Ross, 1876) also shows this Canadian change without changing dimension. It is notoriously historical. By 1833, Canada, as part of the British Empire, had officially abolished domestic slavery so it had no official, state-sanctioned color line. Unlike the United States, Canada had changed, somehow. But in the daily lives of African-Canadians, Canada had not changed. As Father Henson noted in late 1850s, “It was the more necessary, as in many districts, owing to the insurmountable prejudices of the inhabitants, the children of the blacks were not allowed to share the advantages of the common school” 1868, (p. 176). Also see Harvey Whitfield (2010) about the experiences of free African-Canadians in Nova Scotia in 18^th century Canada: “[the] difference between free and enslaved blacks was remarkably fluid” (p. 36).

¹⁰ The Combating Anti-Black racism strategy includes 80 actions and 22 recommendations with an investment of 25.8 million dollars over five years.

¹¹ See Father Henson and Stowe’s (1858) and the narratives of former slaves in Benjamin Drew’s (1856)

¹² Self-determination (kujichagulia) is one of the seven principles of Kwanza (National Museum of African Americans History and Culture, n.d.).

¹³ The Government of Canadian has recently acknowledged a strength-based model in its anti-racism initiative: “Going forward, we will continue to engage racialized communities, religious minority communities and Indigenous Peoples, and meaningfully involve them in decision-making related to proposed government actions” (Canadian Heritage, 2019, p. 10).

¹⁴ The mentors, agency leaders, the academic researchers and program evaluators for JF-WAY were all of African descent. Link to the project: https://jfway.ca/about-us/

¹⁵ This Eurocentrism makes The People’s Party (PPC) (n.d.) of Canada consider Canadian multiculturalism, as upheld by Canada today, to be a “cult of diversity” or as an “extreme culturalism.” Using the us-vs-them posturing of SGP, PPC writes: “The vast majority of Canadians rightly expect them [immigrants] to learn about our [Canadian] history and culture, master one of our official languages, and adopt widely shared Canadian values” (emphasis added). “Canadian values” is a euphemism for European values.

¹⁶ Afrocentric organization such as TAIBU (https://www.taibuchc.ca/en/)l, Nia (https://niacentre.org/about-us/), Obsidian Theory Company (http://www.obsidiantheatre.com/); Caribbean African-Canadian Social Services (https://cafcan.org/), and others based in other cities across Canada can ensure that African-Canadian communities not only communicate but also learn from each other. This communication is either lacking or minimal.